Hyatt Regency San Francisco
- Architect
- John C. Portman Jr.
- Year
- 1973
- City
- San Francisco, CA
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Completed in 1973 at the foot of Market Street, the Hyatt Regency San Francisco was part of architect John Portman's Embarcadero Center development with Trammell Crow and David Rockefeller. Portman's design turned the hotel inside out, wrapping rooms around a vast central atrium rather than a corridor, an innovation that reshaped hotel design nationally. Critic John King later called its self-contained, futuristic style dated yet "still visually dazzling."
the building
Record-holding atrium. The atrium holds the Guinness World Record for largest hotel lobby: 107 meters long, 49 meters wide, and 52 meters high across 15 stories, the defining feature of Portman's design and still the space visitors remember first.
Eclipse sculpture. A large modernist sculpture, Eclipse, by Charles O. Perry sits in the lobby, its swooping form echoing the atrium's dramatic angles.
the architect
John C. Portman Jr. pioneered the atrium hotel typology, and the Hyatt Regency San Francisco is one of the buildings that established it; the design's angled concrete massing and self-contained interior world became a signature Portman move repeated in his later projects.
significance
The hotel was sold in January 2007 for close to $200 million, roughly $250,000 per room across its 802 rooms.
nearby
- Matson Building
- Pacific Gas and Electric Company General Office Building and Annex
- 101 California Street
- San Francisco Ferry Building
- Rincon Center
- Federal Reserve Bank Building